RAIL fares expert Barry Doe provides a handy guide for contactless payments in London.
OFTEN, when I refer to Oyster charges in London, some readers tell me that it’s not fair because they rarely visit London and do not want to have to apply and pay the £5 deposit for an Oyster card.
I need to re-emphasise that only those holding a 16-25, Disabled Persons’, Forces, Gold Card or Senior Railcard need to have an Oyster (with the railcard being ‘added’ to the Oyster at a London Underground station). If you don’t have a railcard, then use a Contactless credit or debit card, which will charge exactly the same as a non-railcard Oyster.
It’s timely that I remind readers of the benefits. If you have a qualifying railcard added to an Oyster you get 34% off the OffPeak (OP) Pay-As-You-Go fares, which are themselves much cheaper than paper tickets, and benefit from an OP daily cap.
To clarify what this means, consider a simple example for journeys on a Mon-Fri after 0930.
If you take a Tube journey within Zones 1 & 2 the normal OP Oyster fare is £2.40. If you have a railcard added it’s £1.60. If you do three journeys you’ll trigger the OP daily cap of a mere £4.50.
People get confused at what happens in the evening peak from 1600 to 1900. If you do an individual Zone 1-2 journey it is charged at the full rate of £2.90 - but it does not affect the OP cap.
For example, if you did your first journey at 1330, a second at 1630 and a third at 1930, you’d be charged £1.60 for the first and £2.90 for the second (because the latter is a peak fare and also has no railcard discount). However, your third journey would be free.
So, although individual fares in the afternoon peak are charged full rate with no discount, the OP cap is not affected, which makes it even more of a bargain.
If you go to Zone 6 at any stage then the cap increases to £8.25, and is still £8.25 out to Amersham/Chesham in Zone 9. Note especially the £8.25 cap also still applies if you go to Heathrow on TfL Rail from Paddington. The single on TfL Rail is a lot more expensive than on the Piccadilly Line, but the cap is the same.
There are higher caps if you go to Watford Junction (£12.10, so use Watford ‘Met’ instead as that’s only Zone 7!), Grays and Hertford East (£12.10), or Shenfield and Gatwick Airport (£13.10). Caps are not available if you use Gatwick Express (GatEx).
Now I consider those who don’t have one of the above railcards, and so use contactless or a normal Oyster card. Incidentally, I gather Transport for London is working on a way to add a ‘railcard interface’ with its contactless system that would allow registered bank account-holders to benefit from the railcard discount. I think at that stage Oyster might disappear, or perhaps only be retained for those overseas visitors who don’t have eligible contactless cards.
So, revisiting the above journeys, with contactless if you did your first Zone 1-2 journey at 1330, a second at 1630 and a third at
1930, you’d be charged £2.40 for the first, £2.90 for the second and £1.50 for the third - because the daily cap is £6.80.
If you go to Zones 6-9 the cap becomes £12.50 (including TfL to Heathrow). Watford Junction, Grays and Hertford East is £18.30, and Shenfield and Gatwick £19.90.
Note if you kept within Zones 1 & 2 (which most casual visitors do) the £6.80 is a bargain, for if you didn’t have Oyster or contactless and bought an OP Day Travelcard instead, that would cost £12.70.
It’s also worth adding that because the caps are so much cheaper than a Travelcard, it pays to be careful if you’re travelling from outside London, as it might be cheaper just to buy to London then use contactless.
For example, from my home town of Bournemouth, an OP Day Return to London is £59.40 on Mon-Fri or £50.40 at weekends. The respective OP Day Travelcards are £70.20 and £59. So the effective Travelcard add-ons are £10.80 Mon-Fri and £8.60 weekends.
Therefore, if you intend travelling only within Zones 1 & 2, it’s better to buy to London then use contactless. For a lot more detail, visit Mike Whitaker’s excellent site at www.oyster-rail.org.uk.
It’s another subject really, but be particularly careful if you use Oyster or contactless to or from Gatwick Airport. If you avoid Gatwick Express the fare to Zone 1 is £14.70 peak or £8.30 from 0930, but if you use Gatwick Express it’s a ridiculous £19.80 all day.
I say ridiculous because now the rolling stock is so awful - the worst the route has ever seen - why would anyone want to pay double to save literally no more than five minutes over normal (frequent) fast Southern services?
However, there is an amazing example of the savings possible. If you ask at Gatwick for an OP Day Return to Heathrow there is only one fare: £71.10! It’s shocking to think this is ‘any permitted’ and so implies Gatwick Express and Heathrow Express are being charged for - but nobody will tell you that.
If instead you use contactless, and avoid GatEx and Heathrow Express (but you can still use TfL Rail from Paddington), it would merely cost the daily cap of £19.90 - a vast reduction on £71.10!
Even this can be reduced to £18.80 by buying a £6.30 OP Day Return to East Croydon, then using contactless from there with the Zones 1-6 cap of £12.50. To me, £71.10 is legalised theft.